


I Think I Can Fix This

by Dimlitidiot



Series: Regarding Gerry Keay and the Catalogue of the Trapped Dead [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Angst, Death, Depression, Gore, Horror, Jon did not burn Gerry's page before the unknowing, Jon tries to bring Gerry Back, M/M, Martin Blackwood is dead, Mentioned Character Death, Post-Apocalypse, Second Person, Self Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, This is not sweet it's just depressing, Tragedy, not canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:47:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28401912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dimlitidiot/pseuds/Dimlitidiot
Summary: It's been 10 years since you stopped the world from ending, and 10 years since Martin died. You're feeling depressed and lonely when you find something that makes you feel incredibly shameful: Gerry's page was left forgotten for 12 years, and it's all your fault.Despite Gerry's pleas for you to follow through and destroy him, you think that you can fix this--fix everything.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims/Gerard Keay, Jonathan sims/Martin Blackwood (mention of past relationship), jon sims/gerry keay
Series: Regarding Gerry Keay and the Catalogue of the Trapped Dead [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2080140
Kudos: 7





	I Think I Can Fix This

The thing is, you can’t stop fear. It will always be alive in people. It doesn’t matter if you keep shoving it down, depleting its resources, fighting darkness with light. The human race just breeds terror. 

Still, after reversing the apocalypse and spending the subsequent 10 years keeping the entities in line by yourself, you think you’ve got a pretty good handle on all of it. If only Gertrude could see you now. 

You’ve grown older. Your job is mostly the same as it ever was, and you had gotten quite good at it. Of course, Martin was gone. You loved Martin, and it was an unbearable loss that traumatized you  _ deeply _ , but after a decade of grief, you had become dull and hard to the pain, and you really didn’t think of it much at all anymore. 

You were grounded again, back on the blind, fearful Earth, and you couldn’t  _ know _ anything. You were just doing what you knew best: wrestling with fear beyond your control and taking statements. After so much time, your dark past only surfaced sometimes.

You don’t know why you’re feeling sentimental today. Maybe you thought of Martin a bit too much this morning, in the quiet time before you can force yourself to not remember such sad things. All you know is you’ve got a nasty depression headache that drives you into the dark relief of the tunnels beneath the institute, though God knows you usually aren’t very keen on going down there. Your body leads you to Gertrude’s old office, even if you weren’t planning on locating it. You open the heavy door to see Gertrude’s neglected desk covered in stacks of boxes. 

You didn’t realize they put your old things in here. Years ago, part of you getting over the end of the world and moving on with your life included having an assistant pack up everything you’d ever touched prior to the apocalypse into boxes and moving it down into the underground maze. Its final resting place was surprising but sadly fitting, your past hidden in a room full of old death.

You open the boxes and slowly rake your eyes over the objects of memory. You’ve touched all of them, a lifetime ago. You sift them through your hands: a tape recorder, a sweatshirt, a few statements… your rib.

The artifacts make you feel less sad than you thought they would. This was… a long time ago. You feel better now. Your job is easier. You know so much more than you did back then. You’re not a little fool anymore.

And then you find something that makes your heart race in fear and shame to touch. The sheet of dead skin is cold against your fingertips, dried and caked with crumbling dust. You slip the page out from a stack of papers, and you almost laugh with frustration. It’s Gerry. 

You really are a selfish little git, aren’t you? You wanted to bury your past behind you so badly that you left this poor boy to suffer while you got to forget your troubles like they were nothing. Your hands start to shake.

You should burn it. Every part of your being knows this objectively, and yet your hand hesitates from searching for the lighter you know is buried somewhere in the boxes. You don’t  _ know _ that you couldn’t help him… you’ve been dealing with fear artifacts for so long now, maybe you could think of something to bring him back. You wish you could  _ know _ , see into the great beyond and understand the answer. But all you're left with is your own arrogance and selfish pride, telling you that  _ surely  _ you could fix this mistake. It’s your ego that urges you to incant the inscription and bring Gerry back into the world, for no other reason than to satisfy your own unending curiosity. 

If you had really grown in the last decade, you would be better. You wouldn’t poke at fear like you wanted it to come out and chase you. You wouldn’t be taking for granted every sacrifice made by every one of your friends in order to move on from the dark stare of the Watcher. 

You should be putting an end to all of this. You should move on from this mistake of the past and focus on the life that you live now. You guess… your life now was feeling quite lonely, though. The idea of being able to see someone from your past is sickeningly tempting. 

Suddenly, you remember why you had been thinking about Martin today, and what was making you feel all kinds of sentimental and depressed. You had a dream about him last night. 

You were lying on the creaky bed of the safehouse. You remember the details of the cabin vividly, because it was the last place you saw before you ruined the entire world. You always captured it all so realistically in your dreams, like you were actually there. 

Some of the boards on the roof were placed too far apart, and the sunlight would filter through in stripes when the sun rose. They were running across your eyes in your dream, rousing you out of your sleep. The comforter was scratchy but  _ warm _ . The cold air running over your nose wasn’t an unpleasant contrast. It smelled like old moths and trees that were much older than you.

And you knew that if you reached out your arm to the right there would be a large, soft, warm body. You could feel the way the mattress dipped under his weight, trying to pull your small body towards his mass. You rolled over, seeking the sensation of his beautiful form pressed against you. You just wanted to feel him, safe, and warm, and yours. 

You rolled into a large dip in the bed, but there was no one there. You smelled his toothpaste, but he was gone, and you were alone. 

As the dream comes back to you, you begin to fold under the weight of a 10-year-old sorrow crouching on your chest, staring you down like the vision of your pain was a particularly tasty meal. You hold back tears that would most definitely fall if you let yourself feel the full extent of your trauma. 

Your attention falls back onto the torn page in your hand.

“Gerry,” you mutter to yourself indulgently, nostalgic. 

You slip the slice of skin under your arm and close the box behind you. As you make your way out of the archives and across town to your apartment, the knowledge of the torn page makes your body burn with anticipation. 

It’s later that night, when you’re sitting in your flat feeling sorry for yourself, that you pull Gerry’s page out from the jacket you used to smuggle it home. You even went so far as to retrieve a lighter, setting it next to the page as if you’d use it. You argue with yourself, furious that you cannot immediately bring yourself to destroy Gerry like he asked you to. It doesn’t help that you feel the power of the eye, trying to convince you over and over again that any destruction of knowledge is bad. You know what Gerry wanted, but you also had a tiny voice in your head begging you to speak Gerry into existence, just to see a familiar face. You were so lonely after all.

But that was wrong. Gerry would have wanted you to set his existence ablaze and pour petrol on it for good measure the instant you realized he wasn’t gone. You should release him now like you should have years and years ago. You are suddenly racked with guilt, overcome by the years of torment you unintentionally inflicted up the unsuspecting boy.

You try to be rational, but your profoundly not-dealt-with trauma is flooding you with negative emotions, threatening to break you down into a piteous mess. You feel like shit. You hate yourself. You miss Martin. You’re sad that you’re such a miserable loner and you’ve been torturing a man for 12 years. And you can hardly even get yourself to feel bad about it! A sick part of your selfish brain just wants to rip Gerry apart to see what the pieces feel like in your hands! Just like you’ve done with everything else you’ve ever set your murderous hands upon. 

You’re crying at this point like a sodden old fool. 

So you read from his page. 

The account of Gerry’s death makes you face more old memories that you had been keen to put behind you. You think about Mary Keay, a wretch of a woman who wasn’t fit to raise any child. And you think about Gertrude, who… well, you’re not really sure who she was to Gerry. Maybe the same as she was to you? Completely detached but still somehow the best mother figure in your life? Gerry… made you a little bit jealous, to be honest. To have Gertrude there to tell him about the world, about everything, instead of floundering and making every possible mistake out of ignorance. You think about every time your misguided actions could have been corrected by somebody,  _ anybody _ . At least Gerry knew about the eye before he was claimed by it. You… you didn’t have anyone to help you back then, and you don’t have anybody now. At least Gerry… well, at least he was someone who  _ knew _ about all of this. 

You finish reading the description of Gerry’s death with a note of finality and anxiousness. Gerry appears out of a gust of wind, and he looks pissed. You’re not sure what it’s like being trapped in a book, but you do remember Gerry saying how it  _ hurt _ . 

“What the hell do you think you’re do--,” Gerry starts, but he cuts off when he sees how pathetic you look, hunched into your lumpy couch with tears streaking down your face. Gerry’s mouth forms a hard line, and you swear his eyes are about to roll but he controls himself from doing so. “Oh,” he says, a little nervous and surprised, but mostly calm as ever. “Well, I guess I’d seem like an ass if I yelled at you right now.”

You really don’t want to get out of it that easily, but if the shoe fits. You sigh, clutching his page--his mutilated dried skin--to your chest. It’s...warm now, you think. You didn’t notice when it was bound to the book but… it is now definitely warm.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m not dead yet, you did look a little cagey that night. But 12 years? That’s a bit of a dick move.” 

You look at him, but you don’t know what to say. What you did was completely wrong, and you have nothing to say for yourself, besides the fact that you are completely alone in this world and also a sentimental oaf. 

He looks you up and down, and you feel your face grow hot. You realize that you’re now quite a bit older than the twenty-something-year-old in front of you. You feel unkempt, clumsy, and, most of all, tired. You’re so tired, but honestly Gerry looks at least as tired as you, even if his skin still radiates the glow of youth. He stares like he knows something secret about you, and you instinctively cover your long frail frame with your long frail arms. 

“I’m...sorry,” you say begrudgingly. 

“Nope,” Gerry says quickly, firmly. “No apologies, no sad feelings and crying, just do what you were supposed to do in the first place, and let’s move on with our lives and deaths already.”

“Gerry, I--,” you start to stutter, but Gerry is staring you down and his ghostly burned and tattooed arms are crossed firmly over his chest. “Maybe we could just talk about this. I  _ think _ I could find a way to bring you back--.”

“Look, Jon,” Gerry sighs. “I don’t want to hurt your clearly tender feelings, but while you were burying your trauma for 10 years, I was stuck in a fucking book, reliving mine  _ every single day _ . You don’t get an opinion about any of this. I’m  _ nothing _ . I’m already dead. What do you not understand about that? There’s nothing left to save.”

“You… you don’t know that. I’ve learned a lot since--since we last spoke. I’m not clueless anymore. I  _ know  _ what’s going on in the world, and I think if I just had some  _ time _ , I could  _ fix _ this--fix everything!”

“Jon…”

Gerry looks at you sadly. His eyes are full of pity for the miserable, lonely Archivist, who saved the world and now has nothing. 

Gerry sighs. He takes a step toward you. You’re forced to tilt your head back to look up at him. Your heart pounds in a funny way that you haven’t felt in a long time. He doesn’t look mad. He just looks tired. 

You think back to the first time you met Gerry. He was so calm, so knowledgeable, so confident. He was everything you wished you were, back then when you were stupid and enmeshed in constant battles of unknown fears. You remember that you… liked the way he talked. He...well he kind of reminded you of yourself, but smarter, more confident, and  _ really  _ quite attractive. You wanted to be him, even in his dead state--maybe specifically dead. You were jealous of how he was removed from the world, how he talked like he was beyond all of it, the grave protecting him from the harms the world sought to dish out. 

Gerry continued. “I’m not mad, okay. I just… I want to die. I’m  _ ready  _ to die. What am I saying, I’m already dead! I don’t have a body! I’m just a consciousness, tied to a piece of rotten corpse.”

You think about how Gerry’s skin has grown warm now where you hold it in your hands. You’re… actually touching him. The only piece of him left above the ground. You swear you could feel energy radiating out of it, flooding your body with coldness. It’s almost like… it was taking its warmth  _ from your body. _

You stand quietly in front of Gerry, unlocking your eyes from his gaze. Everything Gerry said is true. You don’t have a stake in this decision. You bite your tongue in 10 different excuses you have to try to get him to understand that you could save him. He didn’t have to be disappear. You didn’t have to lose him.

Gerry eyes you skeptically. He has no choice but to trust you to destroy him. He’s completely at your mercy. 

“I really hope I won’t be seeing you again, Archivist.”

And with that, Gerry disappears. 

A week passes. Each day, the guilt of not burning his page compounds. You begin to loathe yourself more and more, each night slamming the door of your lonely apartment shut only to sit quietly by the torn page. Even though Gerry’s not really there, it makes you feel less lonely. You guiltily converse with him, but he doesn’t talk back. 

You brainstorm about how you’re going to bring him back. You know it’s stupid, and wrong, and selfish. You  _ wish _ you could convince yourself to move on. But destroying the page, destroying  _ Gerry, _ the only tie that you have left to your old life, doesn’t really feel like a good choice either. 

You get drunk alone at home on Friday night, something you don’t do often. You haunt your house, your depression oozing onto every available surface, surrounding you with sadness. You lie out numbly on your couch. And there is Gerry’s page, still laying like a magazine on your coffee table. You laugh sharply at the awful situation. 

Your sentimentality takes over and you take the page into your hands. Once again, cold begins to flood into your body from the page as warmth trickles down into the dead skin. You press your palm against the page, relishing the hum of energy that you share with Gerry without his permission. On a whim, you take your shirt off and press the page against your chest. Your lungs falter from the deep cold that streams from the page into your body. When you look at the sheet of skin, you swear that you can see a more lively hue coloring the pale flesh. 

Suddenly, you know exactly how you’re going to bring Gerry back. 

You collect the supplies that you’re going to need. Tylenol. Antiseptic. Ice. Fishing line. A relatively large and extremely sharp needle. And another drink of alcohol to steel your nerves.

Despite the fact that you pressed the ice against the skin of your thigh for a good few minutes, it’s still excruciatingly painful when you press Gerry’s now burning hot skin against your own and insert the needle. The cold metal moves through Gerry’s dead skin and into your very much alive and nerve-filled skin. You cry out a groan of agony and then reach for a nearby towel to shove between your teeth. You poke the needle back up through the biological fabric, pulling the thick, plastic thread up behind it. You shiver at the feeling of the cord sliding through your blood, slithering across your muscles. You think about the long night ahead of you and take a long drink of alcohol. 

You keep sewing for what feels like hours. As Gerry’s skin begins to lay flat against yours, conforming at your will against the contour of your thigh, the color begins to return to it. The pink blush on Gerry’s pale complexion contrasts starkly against your dark colored leg. As you ice the next part of your leg, you swear you see goosebumps shiver up tiny mountains over his tattooed eyes. 

When you finish, everything is a mess. You, your leg, the floor, the couch. Gerry’s skin is throbbing, blood pulsing and perfusing it sickeningly. You feel like you’re going to pass out. You lay back against the couch, wondering if you might rest your eyes for a minute before you tidy up… 

You awake in agony, your head suddenly filled with the sound of screaming. A deafeningly loud voice repeats without end, “ _ What did you do what did you do what did you do what did you do--”.  _ You scream in anguish, seizing your skull and wrenching your hair. What  _ did  _ you do?

**Author's Note:**

> I just kept fixating on how Gerry could come back... this version is definitely pretty dark, and kind of leads to a two minds one body kind of deal. Let me know how you liked it and if you want me to write more of this!


End file.
